Parenting:
The Most Challenging Role of a Lifetime

"Whatever we want our children to be, we should become ourselves."
-- Carl Jung

If we want to bring out the best in our children, we must first discover the best within ourselves. It's not an easy journey, but it offers the promise of rich rewards.

I know a secret about you. Sometimes you blow up or scream at your children. You "lose it" so badly at times that you wouldn't want anyone to see your behavior. Or you become a doormat and let the children have their way. Later you feel angry or ashamed. Yet time after time, it happens again. How do I know this about you? Because it's true of every parent I've ever met.

Why Is This Happening?
Why do we "lose it" so badly at times, and fall so short of being the parents we'd like to be? One reason is stress. When we feel pressured and tense, we can behave in ways that surprise and disappoint us.

Meet The Lower Self
The part of us that goes out of control is sometimes called the "lower self." The lower self is like a child within us who hasn't learned a better way to cope. It's immature and primitive. None of us is immune; everyone has a lower self. In fact, we each have several lower-self characters that can show up under stress. These so-called "subpersonalities" try, in their own clumsy ways, to meet our needs. Our goal as parents is to learn from these characters and minimize the trouble they cause.

What Brings Out This Part Of Me?
Our subpersonalities show up when we feel stressed. Often, they surface when we also feel helpless and afraid. That is, we feel under pressure and can't find a good way to handle it. When we experience these feelings an alarm within us can go off and scream, "Crisis!" In response, a subpersonality rides to the rescue and takes over; its sole purpose is to reduce our anxiety.

What's Wrong With Me?
Should we feel ashamed when we slip into lower-self behavior? While it's true that this behavior is ineffective and can be harmful, it helps to see it in context. If we look beneath everything else - the feelings of fear, helplessness and stress - we discover the true root of our behavior: a legitimate need. Nothing wrong with that! All we have to do is find a more effective way to meet it.

What Can We Do About Our Subpersonalities?
Odd as it seems, at the moment when a subpersonality takes over, we don't know it's happening - we have no clue that we've "lost it" and slipped into the lower self. It's only later - after we calm down and look back on what happened - that we feel badly about our behavior. If we want to improve our parenting - and our self-esteem - we need to become aware of a subpersonality at the time it's acting out. The only way we can do that is to become thoroughly acquainted with it, to learn how we think, feel and act at those times. Parents enrolled in our Quality ParentingSM program get to know their subpersonalities during Step One of a Three-Step Process for change.

How To Begin
A drawing exercise helps parents begin to recognize their subpersonalities. You may want to take a minute now to try this for yourself.

Draw Your Subpersonality
To begin, ask yourself...
"Who is that part of me that most interferes with a positive relationship with my child? Who is my subpersonality?"

Draw a picture of the image that comes to mind, whether a character or an object. The quality of artwork is irrelevant; stick figures are fine. Drawings are often humorous exaggerations.

If you feel stuck when you begin to draw, simply allow yourself to reach out to the different colors in front of you and choose a few. Then give yourself permission to accept whatever you draw. I have never found a drawing that wasn't valuable.

After you've drawn the picture, write down answers to the following questions:

• How does it look and act?
• How does it feel?
• How does it think?
• What does it need?

When you finish drawing, give this character a name. It's fun and often helpful to use alliteration; for example, one of my subpersonalities is called, "Frenzied Franny."

My Subpersonality: Frenzied Franny
I first identified my own subpersonality when my son and stepdaughter were quite young, and guilty of little more than a messy room. Here's how I answered the questions about "Frenzied Franny":

• How she looks and acts:
  She has a very stiff body. Her eyes are bloodshot from constant crying; her face is wrinkled, frozen into a permanent expression of pain. Her hair coils out as she screams at her startled kids.
• How she feels:
  Anxious, frustrated, alone and isolated.
  She feels inadequate in her role as mother and fears she's doing an injustice to her children. She feels profoundly guilty when she yells, but cannot stop herself.
  
• How she thinks:
  She says to herself, "Maybe I'm crazy. Or spoiled. No one else seems to have such a hard time accepting the role of mother. The constant mess drives me nuts."
• What does she need?
  "I yearn for order. I need adult stimulation; to be challenged intellectually."
• What Comes Next?
  Awareness is empowering. Once you become familiar with the real troublemaker in the parent-child relationship, you can choose to act differently.

Since a subpersonality surfaces during stress, parents are next taught how to relax and shift to the centered self. In a more calm state, parents are better prepared to stop the impulsive behavior of the lower self. They're able to act from the centered self more often, opening a new world of possibilities. This step consists of a relaxation exercise and a bridge exercise.

In Step Three, parents learn how to express the attitudes and skills of the centered self. They're now prepared to help their children deal with their subpersonalities: their own immature and challenging behavior. As parents learn to model and create an atmosphere of mutual respect, they bring out the best in each child -- and discover the best within themselves!

The complete Three-Step Process is presented in the book, Bring Out The Best -- In Your Child And Yourself. It is available through Synthesis Distribution (SynthesisD@aol.com). You can contact the author about Quality Parenting SM classes and instructor training by calling toll-free: 866 LUV-KIDS (866 588-5437) or email: ivalessen@aol.com.